When Gorillas Smoke Cigars…

A few months ago I wrote a short blog post about Thakin Kodaw Hmaing’s Myauk Htika, a book about monkeys and apes published in Myanmar in 1923. Thakin Kodaw Hmaing was a Burmese nationalist and an influential early twentieth-century literary figure. His Htikas are texts—often about animals—written in the form of religious commentaries. They brought Burmese-Buddhist…

Anti-Colonial Primatology

Animal histories often attempt to de-centre the human in their narratives. They show instead how the actions of non-human animals have made possible and frustrated human activities. They also show how definitions of what it means to be human have been premised on contrasts with the animal other. In both of these arguments, animal historians…